News

Here’s What Suspiria Looks Like as a Children’s Book-and-Record Set

Published

9 years ago

August 15, 2015

Did you know that Dario Argento’s classic Suspiria was originally intended to feature children as the girls attending the ballet school? This would have made for a much different, though likely still awesome movie. I set out to write specifically about this interesting piece trivia, but in my research, I came across some fantastic artwork that imagines Suspiria as an old school children’s book-and-record set. If you grew up in the 80s, you probably remember these.

So first off, let’s check that out. Then we’ll get to the real Suspiria trivia down below.

The artwork comes from The Collinsport Historical Society’s Cousin Barnabas, who calls it a “Photoshop experiment” created on a whim. It was first posted back in April.

Suspiria

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Unfortunately there aren’t actually 24 pages as mentioned on the cover, but it’s still an an awesome little project as far as I’m concerned.

Now for the actual story.

Our own John Squires recently wrote about his trip to haunt convention Haunt Faire, where he saw Suspiria’s Barbara Magnolfi (she played Olga) speak about working on the film.

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John recalled, “Magnolfi talked about working with Dario Argento, remarking that the film was originally going to star children – and Argento, she said, instructed her to basically act like a child would.”

This isn’t a completely unknown fact. It’s been mentioned here and there, but I’m not sure the knowledge is incredibly common among the more casual fans of the film. The IMdb trivia section for the film gets into it a little:

Director Dario Argento‘s original idea was that the ballet school would accommodate young girls not older than 12. However, the studio and producer Salvatore Argento (his father) denied his request because a film this violent involving children would almost certainly be banned. Dario raised the age limit of the girls to 20 but didn’t rewrite the script, hence the naiveté of the characters and the occasionally childlike dialogue. He also put all the doorknobs at about the same height as the actress’ heads, so they would have to raise their arms in order to open the doors, just like children.

According to 366WeirdMovies.com, Argento intended for the girls to be in the 8 to 10-year-old range.

Here’s an interview in which Magnolfi talks about it a little more:

[iframe id=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/eMDeDB80xoM”]

She says, “He wanted all of us to play the roles in a childish way because Suspiria was intended as a fairy tale at the beginning, and obviously you couldn’t do a horror fairy tale, so you know, he got people that were older, but he still wanted us to play in a childish way, so I approached my character in a childish way.”

The film’s Wikipedia page says:

Scriptwriter Daria Nicolodi stated that Suspiria‘s inspiration came from a tale her grandmother told her as a young child about a real life experience she had in an acting academy where she discovered “the teachers were teaching arts, but also black magic.” This story was later confirmed by Argento to have been made up.

It’s hard to argue with the decision to put adults in the characters’ roles, and I don’t think many would argue that the film worked out pretty well in the end, but at the same time, you have to wonder if it would have been even more terrifying had we seen 8 to 10-year-olds in danger from the notorious ballet school witches.

There’s been talk about both a cinematic remake of the film and a television series. It would be interesting to see them play with that concept in either, but that most likely won’t happen. Hell, who knows if these projects will happen at all? A Suspiria remake has been rumored at various times for years.

Children’s Book-and-Record Set Art from www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com

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Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

^{High Desert Hell}

^{The Gemini Project}

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Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

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Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.